12 Critical Project Management Skill: Negotiation
The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponent that he understands their arguments.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Objectives
After reading this lesson, you will be able to
- Explain the importance of negotiation in daily life and on the job
- Describe the advantages of principled negotiation, as described by Roger Fisher and William Ury in their book Getting to Yes
- Explain the role of emotions in negotiations and list some strategies for dealing with them
- Discuss cross-cultural issues related to negotiation
- Provide guidelines on evaluating the ethics of a negotiation
- Define terms related to dispute resolution
- Whether you realize it or not, you engage in negotiations every day. Succeeding at any type of negotiation requires emotional intelligence, preparation, and a willingness to understand the needs of the party on the other side of the negotiating table.
- A negotiation can generate positive emotions, especially if you are able to see the negotiation as a chance to build a relationship, strive to have empathy for the other party, and avoid taking personal offense over the natural give and take of a negotiation.
- A living order negotiation ensures that the parties can continue to work together in the future, in an enduring relationship. By contrast, a geometric order approach to negotiation focuses on immediate results, with little regard to long-term relationships.
- To get the most out of a negotiation, learn all you can about the other parties, use your emotional intelligence to perceive unspoken issues, seek a resolution that works for everyone as much as possible, and avoid an “us versus them” outcome. Most importantly, don’t ever assume you will get everything you want.
12.1 Negotiation 101
The need for negotiation, or settling differences, is a fact of human life. Once you get to work, you’ll probably encounter even more opportunities for negotiation, some of which could have high-stakes outcomes for your projects, your organization, and your career. Your ability to handle even small-scale negotiations (say, who’s responsible for changing the printer’s toner cartridge) can have a surprisingly large effect on your team’s sense of cohesion and purpose. Some negotiations are informal—the toner cartridge, for instance—while others, such as negotiating with a union, are highly formal, governed by a slew of state and federal laws.
You can tell a lot about a person’s negotiation skills from their definition of the term. Short-sighted, ineffective negotiators view a negotiation as a means of getting what they want. Wiser, more practiced negotiators would be more likely to define negotiation as a discussion with the goal of reaching an agreement that is moderately satisfying to both parties. A negotiation is not a competition. There should be no losers. Nobody gets everything they want in a successful negotiation, but everybody gets something. Perhaps most importantly, a wisel